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It's a different world Weymouth native Tom Frank looks back on life as an Army doctor In his second Letter from Afghanistan, Weymouth native Tom Frank looks back on life as an Army doctor in a war zone. His tour over, he will leave for home any day.
I’m not sure exactly why we use Zulu time here. Maybe it is because Afghanistan’s local time cannot be converted to a whole number in any western time zone. It always comes out on a half hour. Like everything else in Afghanistan, even the time is just a little bit off. My day starts at 0300 Zulu - 3 a.m. in London, 7:30 a.m. in Afghanistan. I’ve stopped trying to convert Zulu to local time. It is too difficult and causes confusion. By 1900 Z (11:30 p.m. local) if the hospital is quiet, most of the doctors are seeking the refuge of their hooches. The patients, most of whom are Afghan, are oblivious to our Zulu world. We live in a different time zone than they - and this seems oddly appropriate. This is a land where automobiles vie with donkeys, camels, anemic horses and rickshaws for room on the road; where a small boy with club feet wears shoes on all extremities so he can undulate through the streets like a reptile; where yesterday a man strapped a bomb to himself, jumped on a bicycle and rode into a crowd of his fellow countrymen - where two soldiers were also standing. It seems appropriate that we live in another, separate time zone - in a world of which we cannot be a part.
Army doc returns safely from Kyrgyzstan
The Afghan man was very sick, badly wounded, bloody stumps at the site of what were once ankles. The land mine had blown the left foot into his abdomen, shearing off the organs of generation and causing a horrifically dirty wound.
Col. Tom Frank to visit South Shore relatives in March In a story in The Patriot Ledger on Sept. 16, Army Col. Tom Frank gave a moving account of the day he was called on to fill out death certificates for three U.S. soldiers killed in Afghanistan. Today, his tour finished, the 45-year-old doctor is in Kyrgyzstan awaiting a flight to Fort Benning, Ga. The 230 doctors, nurses, medics and support staff who make up the Army’s 14th Combat Support Hospital are coming home. “They did remarkable work,” he said. “They trained and mentored many Afghan medical students, nurses and doctors. They treated hundreds of Afghan, American, coalition forces and even enemy patients with a degree of care, skill and compassion that would make their countrymen proud.”
The unit treated 3,000 casualties and performed 500 operations. Patient mortality was reduced 30 percent over previous years. It is being replaced by the 455th Medical Expeditionary Force of the Air Force. “Perhaps, with the continuing efforts of the United States, the international community and the many non-governmental organizations currently doing very good work here, the hope that the people of Afghanistan harbor for the future of their country will be realized,” Frank said. Frank was awarded a Bronze Star in recognition of “exceptionally meritorious service” in Afghanistan and his “courage and commitment to mission accomplishment in a combat zone under the most extreme of circumstances.” A 1979 graduate of Weymouth North High School in 1979, Frank attended Tulane University in New Orleans on a four-year Army ROTC scholarship. He received a master’s degree in molecular biology in 1985 and a medical degree from Tulane Medical School in 1989. He served as a field surgeon in Korea with the 43rd M.A.S.H., the unit on which the movie and TV series were based, and spent six years at the U.S. Army Hospital in Heidelberg, Germany. Frank lives in El Paso, Texas, with his wife, Susan Marie Smith, and their nine-year-old daughter, Samantha. In March, he and his family will travel east to see his mother, Ruth MacKay, who lives in Hingham, and his sisters, Brenda Charrier of Scituate and Sara Frank of Westminster. On March 15, he will give a talk at the Linden Ponds housing development in Hingham and on March 16 he will be honored at a reception at the Pembroke Country Club.
The anesthesiologist positioned the patient’s head for intubation. She had to act quickly if his life was to be saved. But what was this? Something strange glistening deep in the patient’s mouth. As the doctor tried to position the endotracheal tube, a large worm crawling out of the trachea, seeking escape from a body that was no longer a hospitable host. The doctor reeled in horror, then quickly recovered. She reached in and deftly extracted the slimy creature. The tube was seated and the operation proceeded. We no longer recoil at the sight of worms escaping from the bodies of the dying or the desperately ill. This is Afghanistan. Everything here is just a little bit off. Yesterday a young Afghan soldier was admitted. He didn’t take up much room in the bed. He had no legs. His right arm was missing at the elbow - he had two fingers on his left hand. Today he is conscious. As we make our rounds, he looks at me. Our eyes meet, but he does not smile. Neither do I. At this moment, a polite smile would have seemed obscene. I am uncomfortable as I try to tell him with my eyes that I am sorry for him. I’m not sure if he understands.-- The woman in the next bed stares at me icily. During her first days of consciousness here she averted her eyes. Now they are steely. She was at home. The day was warm. Her son was playing outside in the yard. The shooting started so suddenly no one knew what was happening. She ran out in the yard to get her son. She just made it outside the door when she was pulled to the ground with violent force and intense pain. She remained conscious long enough to see her son die. She awoke here in pain, a tube in her throat. She almost did not make it. Her wounds are deep and painful. Some we cannot treat. Her husband died that day. They were not good people these men. They were Taliban. At the time they were killed they were probably plotting the deaths and the pain of other people. An informer had disclosed the meeting, sealing their fate. When the woman awoke, she was angry - bitter with fierce and intensely cold eyes. As the weeks passed she seemed more resigned and accepting. Recently she told the translators that she did not want to leave this place. If she goes home, she says, she will have to marry again and become the third or fourth wife of another man. She doesn’t want to be a third or a fourth wife. She doesn’t care about politics. There are always struggles going on outside and around her. She doesn’t try to understand them. She doesn’t ask very much of life. I think she still hates us but perhaps less than she did two weeks ago. A helicopter lands and two groaning forms are brought in on stretchers. Two American helicopter pilots. Their uniforms are quickly cut off as a team of doctors medics and nurses swarm over them like ants on crumb of food. Intravenous lines, oxygen and monitors are attached, vital signs are recorded. The team is an organism, and its tasks are accomplished quickly. They have had a lot of practice. Both pilots are conscious and breathing on their own. One does not look too bad. A few divots of flesh missing from his torso, a broken leg, some other inconsequential wounds. Nothing life threatening. The other also will live, but he is not so fortunate. Where his right arm once was, near the shoulder, strands of shredded muscle and the white of bone are visible. The remaining tissue of his arm is hamburger. It has been redressed and is oozing, but there is no brisk bleeding. The thick crush of bodies around the stretcher has begun to ebb. I approach him, tell him he will be OK. “Sir,” he asks, “Have you ever known a doctor with one arm. I’ve been accepted to medical school. I’m supposed to start in July.” Surprised, I cock my head. “Yes,” I tell him, without lying, “I did once know a doctor with one arm. He was one of the finest infectious disease doctors I have ever known. And he was in the Army.” “I wanted to be a surgeon,” he says. “You may not be a surgeon, but you can still become a doctor.” I left him, troubled. Too close to home. His career stolen from him before it began. Yes, he was still alive and he could have a good life, but he had lost his dominant arm and the chance of a future that had seemed just within his grasp. At least he is alive, but how terrible must losses be that they must be measured against this standard? Soon I will return to a place where losses don’t have such a high standard to meet. Where it is OK to feel angry because someone scratches your car - or to feel sorry for yourself because your throat hurts. Where you are allowed to have a bad day. To walk through our wards, to see the limbless altered bodies, any self-pity is tempered by guilt. A “bad day” seems such an oddly trite concept here. Afghanistan has had a long bad day. It is difficult to understand the ways of this country. It is impossible for me to comprehend this world. We live in Zulu time here. Yes, everything is a little bit off in Afghanistan. Rice asks allies for Afghan aid boost
Rice made her appeal a day after the Bush administration said it would ask Congress for $10.6 billion to help the embattled Afghan government. The U.S. hopes its hefty increase will serve as an incentive for other countries to boost their contributions. Taliban forces, emboldened and rearmed, launched fierce attacks across the country beginning last spring, leading to Afghanistan’s bloodiest year since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion. Crop production for illegal drugs also hit a new high in 2006, and relations worsened between Afghanistan and Pakistan, a key U.S. ally in the fight against global terrorism. “The violence we are seeing is not evidence that our strategy has failed, nor that the situation will improve in our absence,” Rice told NATO foreign ministers who gathered to plan for an expected Taliban military offensive in the spring. “It is evidence of how much we are needed.” Separately, the top U.S. general in Afghanistan told a Pentagon news conference that the spike in violence in Afghanistan has occurred largely because an international force has taken the offensive, not because of any Taliban initiative. Casualties in Afghanistan have risen sharply in recent months as the Taliban have widened military operations and suicide attacks. Some 4,000 people died in insurgency-related violence there last year, Afghan, U.S. and NATO officials reported. Many allies have urged the Bush administration to keep focused on Afghanistan, and some have worried that President Bush’s plan for a 21,500-troop increase in Iraq will starve the Afghan mission. |
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